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Abraham Lincoln 



An Oration 
Delivered Before 
The Lincoln Unioh, 



By HENRY WATTERSON, 

Auditorium, 

Chicago, February t2, !895. 




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ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



An Oration 
Delivered Before the Lincoln Union, 



By 

HENRY WATTERSON. 

Auditorium, Chicago, February 12, 1895, 



. 8 ' 



Library of Conjra«% 
Office of th9 

DHH-1899 

RegUtir of Copyrlghtik 



Copyright, iSgg, 

'JCottrier- Journal Job Printing Company, 

Ltruisznllc, Kentucky. 



48688 



secoNu 00? r. 






Publishers' notice. 



The publishers meet a constantly increasing demand 
in issuing this limited edition of Mr. Watterson's "Abra- 
ham lyiucoln." It was first delivered as an oration be- 
fore the Lincoln Union, of Chicago, February 12, 1895, 
the occasion being the Union's annual celebration of 
the birthday of the martyred President. The great 
Auditorium of that city was crowded to its utmost 
capacity — the surviving son of Mr. Lincoln, and his 
family, occupying one of the boxes — and was received 
by this concourse with .sustained enthusiasm. In re- 
sponse to invitations, which soon became general, Mr. 
Watterson consented to repeat it as a lecture ; and in 
that character it has been heard by admiring multi- 
tudes in every part of the country, but nowhere with 
livelier demonstrations of approval than in the cities of 
the Southern States, from Richmond and Charleston to 
New Orleans and Galveston. The matter is here given 
as originally spoken by Mr. Watterson ; with the single 
exception of the passage relating to the affair at Hamp- 
ton Roads. Finding his statement questioned, touch- 
ing what had actually passed between Mr. Lincoln and 
Mr. Stephens at the famous Conference, Mr. Watterson, 
in his subsequent delivery of the lecture, gave the proof 
of his assertion, at the same time disclaiming any pur- 
pose other than an illustration of the wise magnanimity 
and Christ-like sense of justice of Abraham Lincoln. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



The statesmen in knee-breeches and powdered 
wigs who signed the Declaration of Independ- 
ence and framed the Constitution — the soldiers 
in blue-and-buff, top-boots and epaulets who led 
the armies of the Revolution — were what we are 
wont to describe as gentlemen. They were Eng- 
lish gentlemen. They were not all, nor even 
generally, scions of the British aristocracy; but 
they came, for the most part, of good Anglo- 
Saxon and Scotch-Irish stock. 

The shoe buckle and the ruffled shirt worked 
a spell peculiarly their own. They carried with 
them an air of polish and authority. Hamilton, 
though of obscure birth and small stature, is rep- 
resented by those who knew him to have been 
dignity and grace personified; and old Ben Frank- 
lin, even in woolen hose, and none too courtier- 
like, was the delight of the great nobles and fine 
ladies, in whose company he made himself as much 
at home as though he had been born a Marquis. 

When we revert to that epoch the beauty of 
the scene which history unfolds is marred by lit- 
tle that is uncouth, by nothing that is grotesque. 
The long procession passes, and we see in each 
group, in every figure, something of heroic pro- 
portion. John Adams and John Hancock, Sam- 
uel Warren and |^Samuel Adams, the Livingstons 



in New York, the Carrolls in Maryland, the Ma- 
sons, the Randolphs and the Pendletons in Vir- 
ginia, the Rutledges in South Carolina — what 
pride of Caste, what elegance of manner, what 
dignity and dominancy of character ! And the 
soldiers! Israel Putnam and Nathanael Greene, 
Ethan Allen and John Stark, Mad Anthony Wayne 
and Light Horse Harry Lee, and Morgan and 
Marion and Sumter, gathered about the immortal 
Washington — Puritan and Cavalier so mixed and 
blended as to be indistinguishable the one from 
the other — where shall we go to seek a more 
resplendent galaxy of field marshals? Surely not 
to Blenheim, drinking beakers to Marlborough 
after the famous victory; nor yet to the silken 
marquet of the great Conde on the Rhine, be- 
dizened with gold lace and radiant with the flower 
of the nobility of France! Ah, me! there were 
gentlemen in those days; and they made their 
influence felt upon life and thought long after 
the echoes of Bunker Hill and Yorktown had 
faded away, long after the bell over Independ- 
ence Hall had ceased to ring. 

The first half of the Republic's first half cen- 
tury of existence the public men of America, dis- 
tinguished for many things, were chiefly and 
almost universally distinguished for repose of 
bearing and sobriety of behavior. It was not 
until the institution of African slavery had -got 
into politics as a vital force that Congress be- 
came a bear-garden, and that our law-makers, lay- 
ing aside their manners with their small-clothes, 



fell into the loose-fitting habiliments of modern 
fashion and the slovenly jargon of partisan con- 
troversy. The gentlemen who signed the Dec- 
laration and framed the Constitution were suc- 
ceeded by gentlemen — much like themselves — 
but these were succeeded by a race of party 
leaders much less decorous and much more self- 
confident; rugged, puissant; deeply moved in all 
that they said and did, and sometimes turbulent; 
so that finally, when the volcano burst forth flames 
that reached the heavens, great human bowlders 
appeared amid the glare on every side ; none of 
them much to speak of according to rules reg- 
nant at St. James and Versailles; but vigorous, 
able men, full of their mission and of themselves, 
and pulling for dear life in opposite directions. 

There were Seward and Sumner and Chase, 
Corwin and Ben Wade, Trumbull and Fessen- 
den, Hale and Collamer and Grimes, and Wen- 
dell Phillips, and Horace Greeley, our latter-day 
Franklin. There were Toombs and Hammond, 
and Slidell and Wigfall, and the two little giants, 
Douglas and Stephens, and Yancey and Mason, 
and Jefferson Davis. With them soft words but- 
tered no parsnips, and they cared little how many 
pitchers might be broken by rude ones. The 
issue between them did not require a diagram to 
explain it. It was so simple a child might under- 
stand. It read, human slavery against human 
freedom, slave labor against free labor, and in- 
volved a conflict as inevitable as it was irrepres- 
sible. 



Long before the guns of Beauregard opened 
fire upon Fort Sumter, and, fulfilling the pro- 
gramme of extremism, " blood was sprinkled in 
the faces of the people," the hustings in America 
had become a battle-ground, and every rood of 
debatable territory a ring for controversial mills, 
always tumultuous, and sometimes sanguinary. 
No sooner had the camp-fires of the Revolution 
— which warmed so many noble hearts and lighted 
so many patriotic lamps— no sooner had the camp- 
fires of the Revolution died out, than there began 
to burn, at first fitfully, then to blaze alarmingly in 
every direction, a succession of forest fires, baf- 
fling the energies and resources of the good and 
brave men who sought to put them out. Mr. Web- 
ster, at once a learned jurist and a prose poet, 
might thunder expositions of the written law, to 
quiet the fears of the slave-owner and to lull the 
waves of agitation. Mr. Clay, by his resistless 
eloquence and overmastering personality, might 
compromise first one and then another of the 
irreconcilable conditions that obstructed the path- 
way of conservative statesmanship. To no pur- 
pose, except to delay the fatal hour. 

There were moving to the foreground moral 
forces which would down at no man's bidding. 
The still, small voice of emancipation, stifled 
for a moment by self-interest playing upon 
the fears of the timid, recovered its breath 
and broke into a cry for abolition. The cry 
for abolition rose in volume to a roar. Slowly, 
step by step, the forces of freedom advanced to 



meet the forces of slavery. Gradually, these 
mighty, discordant elements approached the pre- 
destined line of battle ; the gains for a while 
seeming to be in doubt, but in reality all on one 
side. There was less and less of middle ground. 
The middle men who ventured to get in the 
way were either struck down or absorbed by 
the one party or the other. The Senate had 
its Gettysburg ; and many and many a Shiloh was 
fought on the floor of the House. Actual war 
raged in Kansas. The mysterious descent upon 
Harper's Ferry, like a fire-bell in the night, might 
have warned all men of the coming conflagra- 
tion; might have revealed to all men a prophecy 
in the lines that, quoted to describe the scene, 
foretold the event — 

"The rock-ribbed ledges drip with a silent horror of blood, 
And Echo there, whatever is asked her, answers: 'Death.' " 

Greek was meeting Greek at last ; and the field 
of politics became almost as sulphurous and 
murky as an actual field of battle. 

Amid the noise and confusion, the clashing ot 
intellects like sabers bright, and the booming of 
the big oratorical guns of the North and the 
South, now definitely arrayed, there came one day 
into the Northern camp one of the oddest figures 
imaginable; the figure of a man who, in spite oi 
an appearance somewhat at outs with Hogarth's 
line of beauty, wore a serious aspect, if not an 
air of command, and, pausing to utter a single 
sentence that might be heard above the din, 



passed on and for a moment disappeared. The 
sentence was pregnant with meaning. The man 
bore a commission from God on high! He said: 
" A house divided against itself can not stand. 
I beHeve this Government can not endure perma- 
nently half free and half slave. I do not expect 
the Union to be dissolved ; I do not expect the 
house to fall ; but I do expect it will cease to be 
divided." He was Abraham Lincoln. 

How shall I describe him to you? Shall I do 
so as he appeared to me, when I first saw him 
immediately on his arrival in the national capital, 
the chosen President of the United States, his 
appearance quite as strange as the story of his 
life, which was then but half known and half told, 
or shall I use the words of another and a more 
graphic word-painter? 

In January. 1861, Col. A. K. McClure, of Penn- 
sylvania, journeyed to Springfield, Illinois, to meet 
and confer with the man he had done so much to 
elect, but whom he had never personally known. 
" I went directly from the depot to Lincoln's 
house," says Col. McClure, "and rang the bell, 
which was answered by Lincoln, himself, opening 
the door. I doubt whether I wholly concealed 
my disappointment at meeting him. Tall, gaunt, 
ungainly, ill clad, with a homeliness of manner 
that was unique in itself, I confess that my heart 
sank within me as I remembered that this was 
the man chosen by a great nation to become its 
ruler in the gravest period of its history. I re- 
member his dress as if it were but yesterday — 



snuft-colored and slouchy pantaloons; open black 
vest, held by a few brass buttons ; straight or 
evening dress-coat, with tightly fitting sleeves to 
exaggerate his long, bony arms, all supplemented 
by an awkwardness that was uncommon among 
men of intelligence. Such was the picture I met 
in the person of Abraham Lincoln. We sat down 
in his plainly furnished parlor and were uninter- 
rupted during the nearly four hours I remained 
with him, and little by little, as his earnestness, 
sincerity and candor were developed in conversa- 
tion, I forgot all the grotesque qualities which so 
confounded me when I first greeted him. Before 
half an hour had passed I learned not only to re- 
spect, but, indeed, to reverence the man." 

A graphic portrait, truly, and not unlike. I 
recall him, two months later, a little less uncouth, 
a little better dressed, but in singularity and in 
angularity much the same. All the world now 
takes an interest in every detail that concerned 
him, or that relates to the weird tragedy of his 
life and death. 

And who was this peculiar being, destined in 
his mother's arms — for cradle he had none — so 
profoundly to affect the future of human-kind? 
He has told us, himself in words so simple and 
unaffected, so idiomatic and direct, that we can 
neither misread them, nor improve upon them. 
Writing, in 1859, to one who had asked him for 
some biographic particulars, Abraham Lincoln 
said: 



"I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin county, 
Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of 
undistinguished families — second families, perhaps I 
should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, 
was of a family of the name of Hanks. . . . My 
paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from 
Rockingham county, Va. , to Kentucky about 1781 or 
1782, where, a year or two later, he was killed by the 
Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was labor- 
ing to open a farm in the forest. . . . 

"My father (Thomas Lincoln) at the death of his 
father was but six years of age. By the early death of 
his father, and the very narrow circumstances of his 
mother, he was, even in childhood, a wandering, labor- 
ing boy, and grew up literally without education. He 
never did more in the way of writing than bunglingly to 
write his own name. . . . He removed from Ken- 
tucky to what is now Spencer county, Indiana, in my 
eighth year. ... It was a wild region, with many 
bears and other animals still in the woods. 
There were some schools, so-called, but no qualification 
was ever required of a teacher beyond 'readin', writin', 
and cipherin' to the rule of three.' If a straggler sup- 
posed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the 
neighborhood he was looked upon as a wizard. . . . 
Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. 
Still, somehow, I could read, write and cipher to the rule 
of three. But that was all. . . . The little advance 
I now have upon this store of education I have picked 
up from time to time under the pressure of necessity. 

" I was raised to farm work . . . till I was twenty- 
two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, Macon county. 
Then I got to New Salem, . . . where I remained a 
year as a sort of clerk in a store. Then came the Black 
Hawk war; and I was elected captain of a volunteer 
company, a success that gave me more pleasure than any 
I have had since. I went the campaign, was elated, ran 
for the Legislature the same year (1832), and was beaten 



—the only time I ever have been beaten by the people. 
The next, and three succeeding biennial elections, I was 
elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate after- 
ward. During the legislative period I had studied law 
and removed to Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I 
was elected to the lower house of Congress. Was not a 
candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, inclusive, 
practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always 
a Whig in politics, and generally on the Whig electoral 
tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing interest 
in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
aroused me again. 

"If any personal description of me is thought desir- 
able, it may be said that I am in height six feet four 
inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average one 
hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with 
coarse black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or 
brands recollected." 

There is the whole story, told by himself, and 
brought down to the point where he became a 
figure of national importance. 

His political philosophy was expounded in four 
elaborate speeches; one delivered at Peoria, 111., 
the 1 6th of October, 1854; one at Springfield, 111., 
the 1 6th of June, 1858; one at Columbus, Ohio, 
the i6th of September, 1859, and one the 27th of 
February, i860, at Cooper Institute, in the city 
of New York. Of course Mr. Lincoln made many 
speeches and very good speeches. But these 
four, progressive in character, contain the sum 
total of his creed touching the organic character 
of the Government and at the same time his 
party view of contemporary issues. They show 
him to have been an old-line Whig of the school 



of Henry Clay, with strong emancipation lean- 
ings; a thorough anti-slavery man, but never an 
extremist or an abolitionist. To the last he hewed 
to the line thus laid down. 

Two or three years ago I referred to Abraham 
Lincoln — in a casual way — as one "inspired of 
God." I was taken to task for this and thrown 
upon my defense. Knowing less then than I 
know now of Mr. Lincoln, I confined myself to 
the superficial aspects of the case ; to the career 
of a man who seemed to have lacked the oppor- 
tunity to prepare himself for the great estate to 
I which he had come, plucked as it were from 
obscurity by a caprice of fortune. 

Accepting the doctrine of inspiration as a law 
of the universe, I still stand to this belief; but I 
must qualify it as far as it conveys the idea that 
Mr. Lincoln was not as well equipped in actual 
knowledge of men and affairs as any of his con- 
temporaries. Mr. Webster once said that he 
had been preparing to make his reply to Hayne 
for thirty years. Mr. Lincoln had been in uncon- 
scious training for the Presidency for thirty 
years. His maiden address as a candidate for the 
Legislature, issued at the ripe old age of twenty- 
three, closes with these words, " But if the good 
people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me 
in the background, I have been too familiar with 
disappointment to be very much chagrined." 
The man who wrote that sentence, thirty years 
later wrote this sentence: "The mystic chords 
of memory, stretching from every battle-field 



and patriot-grave to every living heart and 
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet 
swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, 
as surely they will be, by the angels of our bet- 
ter nature." Between those two sentences, joined 
by a kindred, somber thought, flowed a life-cur- 
rent— 

"Strong, without rage, without o'erflowing, full," 

pausing never for an instant; deepening whilst it 
ran, but nowise changing its course or its tones; 
always the same ; calm ; patient ; affectionate ; 
like one born to a destiny, and, as in a dream, 
feeling its resistless force. 

It is needful to a complete understanding of 
Mr. Lincoln's relation to the time and to his place 
in the political history of the country, that the 
student peruse closely the four speeches to which 
I have called attention ; they underlie all that 
passed in the famous debate with Douglas ; all 
that their author said and did after he succeeded 
to the presidency. They stand to-day as mas- 
terpieces of popular oratory. But for our pres- 
ent purpose the debate with Douglas will suffice — 
the most extraordinary intellectual spectacular 
the annals of our party warfare afford. Lin- 
coln entered the canvass unknown outside the 
State of Illinois. He closed it renowned from 
one end of the land to the other. 

Judge Douglas was himself unsurpassed as a 
stump-speaker and ready debater. But in that 
campaign, from first to last, Judge Douglas was at 



a serious disadvantage. His bark rode upon an 
ebbing time ; Lincoln's bark rode upon a flow- 
ing tide. African slavery was the issue now ; 
and the whole trend of modern thought was set 
against slavery. The Democrats seemed hope- 
lessly divided. The Little Giant had to face a 
triangular opposition embracing the Republicans, 
the Administration, or Buchanan Democrats, and 
a little remnant of the old Whigs, who fancied 
that their party was still alive and thought to hold 
some kind of balance of power. Judge Douglas 
called the combination the "allied army," and 
declared that he would deal with it "just as the 
Russians dealt with the allies at Sebastopol — 
that is, the Russians did not stop to inquire, when 
they fired a broadside, whether it hit an English- 
man, a Frenchman or a Turk." It was some- 
thing more than a witticism when Mr. Lincoln 
rejoined, " In that case, I beg he will indulge us 
whilst we suggest to him that those allies took 
Sebastopol." 

He followed this center-shot with volley after 
volley of exposition so clear, of reasoning so close, 
of illustration so pointed, and, at times, of humor 
so incisive, that, though he lost his election — 
though the allies did not then take Sebastopol — 
his defeat counted for more than Douglas' vic- 
tory, for it made him the logical and successful 
candidate for President of the United States two 
years later. 

What could be more captivating to an out-door 
audience than Lincoln's description ''of the two 



persons who stand before the people of the State 
as candidates for the Senate," to quote his pref- 
atory words? "Judge Douglas," he said, " is of 
world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians 
of his party . . . have been looking upon him as 
certainly . . . to be President of the United States. 
They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, 
post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabi- 
net appointments, chargeships and foreign mis- 
sions, bursting and spreading out in wonderful ex- 
uberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy 
hands. And as they have been gazing upon this 
attractive picture so long, they can not, in the 
little distraction that has taken place in the party, 
bring themselves to give up the charming hope; 
but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, 
sustain him and give him marches, triumphal 
entries and receptions, beyond what in the days 
of his highest prosperity they could have brought 
about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has 
ever expected me to be President. In my poor, 
lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that any 
cabbages were sprouting." 

As the debate advanced, these cheery tones 
deepened into harsher notes ; crimination and 
recrimination followed ; the two gladiators were 
strung to their utmost tension. They became 
dreadfully in earnest. Personal collision was 
narrowly avoided. I have recently gone over the 
entire debate, and with a feeling I can only de- 
scribe as most contemplative, most melancholy. 

I knew Judge Douglas well ; I admired, re- 

2 



spected, loved him. I shall never forget the day 
he quitted Washington to go to his home in Illi- 
nois to return no more. Tears were in his eyes 
and his voice trembled like a woman's. He was 
then a dying man. He had burned the candle 
at both ends from his boyhood ; an eager, ardent, 
hard-working, pleasure-loving man ; and though 
not yet fifty, the candle was burned out. His 
infirmities were no greater than those of Mr. 
Clay ; not to be mentioned with those of Mr. 
Webster. But he lived in more exacting times. 
The old-style party organ, with its mock heroics 
and its dull respectability, its beggarly array of 
empty news columns and cheap advertising, had 
been succeeded by that unsparing, tell-tale scan- 
dal-monger, Modern Journalism, with its myriad 
of hands and eyes, its vast retinue of detectives, 
and its quick transit over flashing wires, annihi- 
lating time and space. Too fierce a light beat 
upon the private life of public men, and Douglas 
suffered from this as Clay and Webster, Silas 
Wright and Franklin Pierce had not suffered. 

The presidential bee was in his bonnet, cer- 
tainly; but its buzzing there was not noisier than 
in the bonnets of other great Americans, who 
have been dazzled by that wretched bauble. His 
plans and schemes came to naught. He died at 
the moment when the death of those plans and 
schemes was made more palpable and impressive 
by the roar of cannon proclaiming the reality of 
that irrepressible conflict he had refused to fore- 
see and had struggled to avert. His life-long 



rival was at the head of affairs. No one has 
found occasion to come to the rescue of his fame. 
No party interest has been identified with his 
memory. But when the truth of history is writ- 
ten, it will be told that, not less than Webster and 
Clay, he, too, was a patriotic man, who loved his 
country and tried to save the Union. He tried 
to save the Union, even as Webster and Clay 
had tried to save it, by compromises and expedi- 
ents. It was too late. The string was played 
out. Where they had succeeded he failed ; but, 
for the nobility of his intention, the amplitude of 
his resources, the splendor of his combat, he 
merits all that any leader of losing cause ever 
gained in the report of posterity; and posterity 
will not deny him the title of statesman. 

In that great debate it was Titan against 
Titan; and, perusing it after the lapse of forty 
years, the philosophic and impartial critic will 
conclude which got the better of it, Lincoln or 
Douglas, much according to his sympathy with 
the one or the other. Douglas, as I have said, 
had the disadvantage of riding an ebb-tide. But 
Lincoln encountered a disadvantage in riding a 
flood-tide, which was flowing too fast for a man 
so conservative and so honest as he was. Thus 
there was not a little equivocation on both sides 
foreign to the nature of the two. Both wanted 
to be frank. Both thought they were being frank. 
But each was a little afraid of his own logic ; 
each was a little afraid of his own following ; 
and hence there was considerable hair-splitting, 



involving accusations that did not accuse and de- 
nials that did not deny. They were politicians, 
these two, as well as statesmen ; they were poli- 
ticians, and what they did not know about polit- 
ical campaigning was hardly worth knowing. 
Reverently, I take oif my hat to both of them ; 
and I turn down the page ; I close the book and 
lay it on its shelf, with the inward ejaculation, 
"there were giants in those days." 

I am not undertaking to deliver an oral biogra- 
phy of Abraham Lincoln, and shall pass over the 
events which quickly led up to his nomination 
and election to the presidency in i860. 

I met the newly elected President the afternoon 
of the day in the early morning of which he had 
arrived in Washington. It was a Saturday, I think. 
He came to the Capitol under Mr. Seward's 
escort, and, among the rest, I was presented to 
him. His appearance did not impress me as fan- 
tastically as it had impressed Colonel McClure. 
I was more familiar with the Western type than 
Colonel McClure, and, whilst Mr. Lincoln was 
certainly not an Adonis, even after prairie ideals, 
there was about him a dignity that commanded 
respect. 

I met him again the forenoon of the 4th of 
March in his apartment at Willard's Hotel as he 
was preparing to start to his inauguration, and was 
touched by his unaffected kindness ; for I came 
with a matter requiring his immediate attention. 
He was entirely self-possessed; no trace of nerv- 
ousness; and very obliging. I accompanied the 



cortege that passed from the Senate chamber to 
the east portico of the capitol, and, as Mr. Lin- 
coln removed his hat to face the vast multitude 
in front and below, I extended my hand to receive 
it, but Judge Douglas, just beside me, reached 
over my outstretched arm and took the hat, hold- 
ing it throughout the delivery of the inaugural 
address. I stood near enough to the speaker's 
elbow not to obstruct any gestures he might 
make, though he made but few ; and then it was 
that I began to comprehend something of the 
power of the man. 

He delivered that inaugural address as if he 
had been delivering inaugural addresses all his 
life. Firm, resonant, earnest, it announced the 
coming of a man ; of a leader of men ; and in its 
ringing tones and elevated style, the gentlemen 
he had invited to become members of his political 
family — each of whom thought himself a bigger 
man than his master — might have heard the voice 
and seen the hand of a man born to command. 
Whether they did or not, they very soon ascer- 
tained the fact. From the hour Abraham Lincoln 
crossed the threshold of the White House to the 
hour he went thence to his death, there was not 
a moment when he did not dominate the political 
and military situation and all his official subor- 
dinates. 

Mr. Seward was the first to fall a victim to his 
own temerity. One of the most extraordinary 
incidents that ever passed between a chief and 
his lieutenant came about before the first month 



of the new administration had closed. The ist 
of April Mr. Seward submitted to Mr. Lincoln a 
memorandum, entitled "Some Thoughts for the 
President's Consideration." He began this by- 
saying : " We are at the end of a month's admin- 
istration, and yet without a policy, either foreign 
or domestic." Then follows a series of sugges- 
tions hardly less remarkable for their character 
than for their emanation. There are quite a 
baker's dozen of them, for the most part flimsy 
and irrelevant; but two of them are so conspicu- 
ous for a lack of sagacity and comprehension 
that I shall quote them as a sample of the whole: 

" We must change the question before the pub- 
lic," says Mr. Seward, " from one upon slavery, 
or about slavery, to one upon Union or disunion," 
— as if it had not been thus changed already, — 
and " I would demand explanations from Spain 
and France, energetically, at once, . . . and if 
satisfactory explanations are not received from 
Spain and France, I would convene Congress 
and declare war against them. ... I would 
seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, 
and send agents into Canada, Mexico and Cen- 
tral America to arouse a vigorous spirit of Con- 
tinental independence on this continent against 
European intervention." 

Think of it ! At the moment this advice was 
seriously given the head of the Government by 
the head of the Cabinet — supposed to be the 
most accomplished statesman and astute diplo- 
matist of his time — a Southern Confederacy had 



been actually established, and Europe was only 
too eager for some pretext to put in its oar, and 
effectually, finally, to compel a dissolution of 
the Union and to compass the defeat of the 
Republican experiment in America. The Gov- 
ernment of the United States had but to make a 
grimace at France and Spain ; to bat its eye at 
England and Russia, to raise up a quadruple 
alliance. Monarchy against Democracy, bringing 
down upon itself the navies of the world, and 
double assuring, double confirming the Govern- 
ment of Jefferson Davis. 

In concluding these astounding counsels, Mr. 
Seward says: 

" But whatever policy we adopt, there must be an 
energetic prosecution of it. 

" For this purpose it must be somebody's business to 
pursue and direct it incessantly. 

" Either the President must do it himself and be all 
the while active in it, or devolve it on some member of 
his Cabinet. 

"Once adopted, all debates on it must end and all 
agree and abide. 

"It is not in my especial province: but I neither 
seek to evade nor assume responsibility." 

Before hearing Mr. Lincoln's answer to all this, 
consider what it really implied. If Mr. Seward 
had simply said : "Mr. Lincoln, you are a failure 
as President, but turn over the direction of affairs 
exclusively to me, and all shall be well and all 
be forgiven," he could not have spoken more 
explicitly and hardly more offensively. 



Now mark how a great man carries himself at 
a critical moment under extreme provocation. 
Here is the answer Mr. Lincoln sent Mr. Seward 
that very night: 

"Executive Mansion, April i, 1861.— Hon. W. H. 
Seward — My Dear Sir : Since parting with you I have 
been considering your paper dated this day and entitled 
' some thoughts for the President's consideration.' The 
first proposition in it is, 'we are at the end of a month's 
administration and yet without a policy, either domestic 
or foreign. ' 

"At the beginning of that month in the inaugural I 
said : ' The power confided to me will be used to hold, 
occupy and possess the property and places belonging to 
the Government, and to collect the duties and imports.' 
This had your distinct approval at the time ; and taken 
in connection with the order I immediately gave General 
Scott, directing him to employ every means in his power 
to strengthen and hold the forts, comprises the exact 
domestic policy you urge, with the single exception that 
it does not propose to abandon Fort Sumter. 

" The news received yesterday in regard to Santo 
Domingo certainly brings a new item within the range 
of our foreign policy, but up to that time we have been 
preparing circulars and instructions to ministers and the 
like, all in perfect harmony, without even a suggestion 
that we had no foreign policy. 

" Upon your closing proposition — that ' Whatever 
policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution 
of it. 

" ' For this purpose it must be somebody's business to 
pursue and direct it incessantly. 

" ' Either the President must do it himself, and be all 
the while active in it, or devolve it upon some member 
of his Cabinet. 

" ' Once adopted, debates must end, and all agree and 



abide.' I remark that if this be done, I must do it. 
When a general line of policy is adopted, I apprehend 
there is no danger of it.s being changed without good 
reason, or continuing to be a subject of unnecessary de- 
bate; still, upon points arising in its progress, I wish, 
and suppose I am entitled to have, the advice of all the 
Cabinet. Your obedient servant, 

A. Lincoln." 

I agree with Lincoln's biographers that in this 
letter not a word was omitted that was necessary, 
and not a hint or allusion is contained that could 
be dispensed with. It was conclusive. It ended 
the argument. Mr. Seward dropped into his 
place. Mr. Lincoln never referred to it. From 
that time forward the understanding between 
them was mutual and perfect. So much so that 
when, the 21st of the following May, Mr. Seward 
submitted to the President the draft of a letter of 
instruction to Charles Francis Adams, then Min- 
ister to England, Mr. Lincoln did not hesitate to 
change much of its character and purpose by his 
alterations of its text. The original copy of this 
dispatch, in Mr. Seward's handwriting, with Mr. 
Lincoln's interlineations, is still to be seen on file 
in the Department of State. It is safe to say 
that, if that letter had gone as Mr. Seward wrote 
it, a war with England would have been inevi- 
table. Mr. Lincoln's additions, hardly less than 
his suppressions, present a curious contrast be- 
tween the seer in affairs and the scholar in affairs. 
Even in the substitution of one word for another, 
Mr. Lincoln shows a comprehension both of the 
situation and the language which seems to have 



been wholly wanting in Mr. Seward, with all his 
experience and learning. It is said that, ponder- 
ing over this document, weighing in his mind its 
meaning and import, his head bowed and pencil 
in hand, Mr. Lincoln was overheard murmuring to 
himself: " One war at a time — one war at a time." 

Whilst I am on this matter of who was really 
President whilst Abraham Lincoln occupied the 
office, I may as well settle it. We all remember 
that, in setting up for a bigger man than his chief, 
Mr. Chase fared no better than Mr. Seward. But 
it is sometimes said that Mr. Stanton was more 
successful in this line. Many amusing stories are 
told of how Stanton lorded it over Lincoln. On 
a certain occasion it is related that the President 
was informed by an irate friend that the Secretary 
of War had not only refused to execute an order 
of his, but had called him a fool into the bar- 
gain. "Did Stanton say I was a fool?" said 
Lincoln. "Yes," replied his friend, "he said 
you were a blank, blank fool ! " Lincoln looked first 
good-humoredly at his friend and then furtively 
out of the window in the direction of the War De- 
partment, and carelessly observed: " If Stanton 
said that I was a blank fool, it must be true, for 
he is nearly always right and generally says what 
he means. I will just step over and see Stanton." 

On another occasion Mr. Lincoln is quoted as 
saying: "I have very little influence with this 
Administration, but I hope to have more with the 
next." 

Complacent humor such as this simply denotes 



assured position. It is merely the graciousness of 
conscious power. But there happens to be on 
record a story of a different kind. This is related 
by Gen. James B. Fry, Provost Marshal General 
of the United States, on duty in the War Depart- 
ment. 

As General Fry tells it, Mr. Stanton seems 
to have had the right of it. The President 
had given an order which the Secretary of 
War had refused to issue. The President there- 
upon came into the War Department and this is 
what happened. In answer to Mr. Lincoln's in- 
quiry as to the cause of the trouble, Mr. Stanton 
went over the record and the grounds for his 
action, and concluded with: "Now, Mr. Presi- 
dent, these are the facts, and you must see that 
your order can not be executed." 

Lincoln sat upon a sofa with his legs crossed — 
I am quoting General Fry — and did not say a 
word until the Secretary's last remark. Then he 
said in a somewhat positive tone: " Mr. Secre- 
tary, I reckon you'll have to execute the order." 

Stanton replied with asperity — " Mr. President, 
I can not do it. The order is an improper one 
and I can not execute it." 

Lincoln fixed his eye upon Stanton, and in a 
firm voice, and with an accent that clearly showed 
his determination, he said: 

"Mr. Secretary, it will have to be done." 

"Stanton then realized" — I am still quoting 
General Fry — "that he was overmatched. He 
had made a square issue with the President and 



been defeated, notwithstanding the fact that he 
was in the right. Upon an intimation from him I 
withdrew and did not witness his surrender. A 
few minutes after I reached my office I received 
instructions from the Secretary to carry out the 
President's order. Stanton never mentioned the 
subject to me afterward, nor did I ever ascertain 
the special, and no doubt sufficient reason, which 
the President had for his action in the case." 

Once General Halleck got on a high horse, 
and demanded that, if Mr. Lincoln approved 
some ill-natured remarks alleged to have been 
made of certain military men about Washington, 
by Montgomery Blair, the Postmaster-General, 
he should dismiss the officers from the service, 
but, if he did not approve, he should dismiss the 
Postmaster-General from the Cabinet. Mr. Lin- 
coln's reply is very characteristic. He declined 
to do either of the things demanded. He said : 

"Whether the remarks were really made I do not 
know, nor do I suppose such knowledge necessary to a 
correct response. If they were made, I do not approve 
them ; and yet, under the circumstances, I would not 
dismiss a member of the Cabinet therefor. I do not con- 
sider what may have been hastily said in a moment of 
vexation .... suf&cient ground for so grave a step. 
Besides this, truth is generally the best vindication 
against slander. I propose continuing to be myself the 
judge as to when a member of the Cabinet shall be 
dismissed." 

Next day, however, he issued a warning to the 
members of his political family, which, in the form 



of a memorandum, he read to them. There is 
nothing equivocal about this. In language and 
in tone it is the utterance of a master. I will 
read it to you, as it is very brief and to the pur- 
pose. The President said : 

" I must myself be the judge how long to retain and 
when to remove any of you from his position. It would 
greatly pain me to discover any of you endeavoring to 
procure another's removal, or in any way to prejudice 
him before the public. Such endeavor would be a wrong 
to me, and much worse, a wrong to the country. My 
wish is, that on this subject no remark be made, nor any 
question be asked by any of you, here or elsewhere, now 
or hereafter." 

Always courteous, always tolerant, always mak- 
ing allowance, yet always explicit, his was the 
master-spirit, his the guiding hand ; committing 
to each of the members of his Cabinet the details 
of the work of his own department; caring noth- 
ing for petty sovereignty ; but reserving to him- 
self all that related to great policies, the starting 
of moral forces and the moving of organized 
ideas. 

I want to say just here a few words about Mr. 
Lincoln's relation to the South and the people 
of the South. 

He was, himself, a Southern man. He and all 
his tribe were Southerners. Although he left 
Kentucky when but a child, he was an old child ; 
he never was very young ; and he grew to manhood 
in a Kentucky colony; for what was Illinois in 
those days but a Kentucky colony, grown since 



somewhat out of proportion? He was in no 
sense what we in the South used to call "a poor 
white." Awkward, perhaps; ungainly, perhaps, 
but aspiring ; the spirit of a hero beneath that 
rugged exterior; the soul of a prose-poet behind 
those heavy brows ; the courage of a lion back 
of those patient, kindly aspects ; and, long before 
he was of legal age, a leader. His first love was 
a Rutledge ; his wife was a Todd. 

Let the romancist tell the story of his romance. 
I dare not. No sadder idyl can be found in all 
the short and simple annals of the poor. 

We know that he was a prose-poet ; for have we 
not that immortal prose-poem recited at Gettys- 
burg? We know that he was a statesman ; for has 
not time vindicated his conclusions ? But the South 
does not know, except as a kind of hearsay, that 
he was a friend; the one friend who had the 
power and the will to save it from itself He 
was the one man in public life who could have 
come to the head of affairs in 1861 bringing with 
him none of the embittered resentments growing 
out of the anti- slavery battle. Whilst Seward, 
Chase, Sumner and the rest had been engaged in 
hand-to-hand combat with the Southern leaders 
at Washington, Lincoln, a philosopher and a 
statesman, had been observing the course of 
events from afar, and like a philosopher and a 
statesman. The direst blow that could have been 
laid upon the prostrate South was delivered by 
the assassin's bullet that struck him down. 

But I digress. Throughout the contention 



that preceded the war, amid the passions that 
attended the war itself, not one bitter, proscriptive 
word escaped the Hps of Abraham Lincoln, whilst 
there was hardly a day that he was not project- 
ing his great personality between some Southern 
man or woman and danger. 

Under date of February 2. 1848, and from 
the hall of the House of Representatives at 
Washington, whilst he was serving as a member 
of Congress, I find this short note to his law 
partner at Springfield: 

' ' Dear William : I take up my pen to tell you that 
Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, a little, slim, pale-faced, con- 
sumptive man, with a voice like Logan's" (that was 
Stephen T. , not John A.), "has just concluded the very 
best speech of an hour's length I ever heard. My old, 
withered, dry eyes" (he was then not quite thirty-seven 
years of age) "are full of tears yet." 

From that time forward he never ceased to 
love Stephens, of Georgia. 

After that famous Hampton Roads conference, 
when the Confederate Commissioners, Stephens, 
Campbell and Hunter, had traversed the field of 
official routine with Mr. Lincoln, the President, 
and Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, Lincoln, 
the friend, still the old Whig colleague, though 
one was now President of the United States and 
the other Vice-President of the Southern Con- 
federacy, took the "slim, pale-faced, consump- 
tive man" aside, and, pointing to a sheet of 
paper he held in his hand, said: "Stephens, let 
me write ' Union' at the top of that page, and 



you may write below it whatever else you 
please." 

In the preceding conversation Mr. Lincoln had 
intimated that payment for the slaves was not 
outside a possible agreement for reunion and 
peace. He based that statement upon a plan he 
already had in hand, to appropriate four hun- 
dred millions of dollars to this purpose. 

There are those who have put themselves to 
the pains of challenging this statement of mine. 
It admits of no possible equivocation. Mr. Lin- 
coln carried with him to Fortress Monroe two 
documents that still stand in his own handwrit- 
ing; one of them a joint resolution to be passed 
by the two Houses of Congress appropriating 
the four hundred millions, the other a proclama- 
tion to be issued by himself, as President, when 
the joint resolution had been passed. These 
formed no part of the discussion at Hampton 
Roads, because Mr. Stephens told Mr. Lincoln 
they were limited to treating upon the basis of 
the recognition of the Confederacy, and to all in- 
tents and purposes the conference died before it 
was actually born. But Mr. Lincoln was so filled 
with the idea that next day, when he had returned 
to Washington, he submitted the two documents 
to the members of his Cabinet. E.xcepting Mr. 
Seward, they were all against him. He said: 
" Why, gentlemen, how long is the war going to 
last? It is not going to end this side of a hundred 
days, is it? It is costing us four millions a day. 
There are the four hundred millions, not counting 



the loss of life and property in the meantime. But 
you are all against me, and I will not press the 
matter upon you." I have not cited this fact of 
history to attack, or even to criticise, the policy 
of the Confederate Government, but simply to 
illustrate the wise magnanimity and justice of the 
character of Abraham Lincoln. For my part I 
rejoice that the war did not end at Fortress Mon- 
roe — or any other conference — but that it was 
fought out to its bitter and logical conclusion at 
Appomattox. 

It was the will of God that there should be, as 
God's own prophet had promised, " a new birth 
of freedom," and this could only be reached by 
the obliteration of the very idea of slavery. God 
struck Lincoln down in the moment of his tri- 
umph, to attain it ; He blighted the South to 
attain it. But He did attain it. And here we 
are this night to attest it. God's will be done on 
earth as it is done in Heaven. Bu" let no South- 
ern man point finger at me because I canonize 
Abraham Lincoln, for he was the one friend we 
had at Court when friends were most in need ; 
he was the one man in power who wanted to pre- 
serve us intact, to save us from the wolves of 
passion and plunder that stood at our door ; and 
as that God, of whom it has been said that 
"whom He loveth He chasteneth," meant that 
the South should be chastened, Lincoln was put 
out of the way by the bullet of an assassin, hav- 
ing neither lot nor parcel, North or South, but a 
winged emissary of fate, flown from the shadows 
3 



of the mystic world, which ^schylus and Shake- 
speare created and consecrated to tragedy! 

I sometimes wonder shall we ever attain a 
journalism sufficiently upright in its treatment 
of current events to publish fully and fairly the 
utterances of our public men, and, except in cases 
of provable dishonor, to leave their motives and 
their personalities alone? 

Reading just what Abraham Lincoln did say 
and did do, it is inconceivable how such a man could 
have aroused antagonism so bitter and abuse so 
savage, to fall at last by the hand of an assassin. 

We boast our superior civilization and our en- 
lightened freedom of speech ; and yet, how few 
of us — when a strange voice begins to utter 
unfamiliar or unpalatable things — how few of us 
stop and ask ourselves, may not this man be 
speaking the truth after all ? It is so easy to call 
names. It is so easy to impugn motives. It is so 
easy to misrepresent opinions we can not answer. 
From the least to the greatest what creatures 
we are of party spirit, and yet, for the most part, 
how small its aims, how imperfect its instru- 
ments, how disappointing its conclusions! 

One thinks now that the world in which Abra- 
ham Lincoln lived might have dealt more gently 
by such a man. He was himself so gentle — so 
upright in nature and so broad of mind — so sunny 
and so tolerant in temper — so simple and so un- 
affected in bearing — a rude exterior covering an 
undaunted spirit, proving by his every act and 
word that — 



" The bravest are the tenderest, 
The loving are the daring." 

Though he was a party leader, he was a typical 
and patriotic American, in whom even his ene- 
mies might have found something to respect and 
admire. But it could not be so. He committed 
one grievous offense ; he dared to think and he 
was not afraid to speak ; he was far in advance of 
his party and his time ; and men are slow to for- 
give what they do not readily understand. 

Yet, all the while that the waves of passion 
were dashing over his sturdy figure, reared 
above the dead-level, as a lone oak upon a sandy 
beach, not one harsh word rankled in his heart 
to sour the milk of human kindness that, like a 
perennial spring from the gnarled roots of some 
majestic tree, flowed within him. He would 
smooth over a rough place in his official inter- 
course with a funny story fitting the case in 
point, and they called him a trifler. He would 
round off a logical argument with a familiar 
example, hitting the nail squarely on the head 
and driving it home, and they called him a 
buffoon. Big wigs and little wigs were agreed 
that he lowered the dignity of debate; as if 
debates were intended to mystify, and not to 
clarify truth. Yet he went on and on, and 
never backward, until his time was come, when 
his genius, fully developed, rose to the great 
exigencies intrusted to his hands. Where did he 
get his style? Ask Shakespeare and Burns 
where they got their style. Where did he get 



his grasp upon affairs and his knowledge of men? 
Ask the Lord God who created miracles in 
Luther and Bonaparte! 

Here, under date of November 21, 1864, amid 
the excitement attendant upon his re-election to 
the Presidency, Mr. Lincoln found time to write 
the following letter to Mrs. Bixby, of Boston, 
a poor widow who had lost five sons killed in 
battle. 

My Dear Madam ; I have been shown in the files of 
the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-Gen- 
eral of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five 
sons who have died gloriouslj' on the field of battle. I 
feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine 
which should attempt to beguile you from a loss so 
overwhelming. But I can not refrain from tendering 
you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of 
the Republic they died to save. I pray that our 
Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your 
bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory 
of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must 
be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar 
of freedom. 

Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 
A. Lincoln. 

Contrast this exquisite prose-poem with the 
answer he made to General Grant, who asked 
him whether he should make an effort to capture 
Jefferson Davis. "I told Grant," said Lincoln, 
relating the incident, "the story of an Irishman 
who had taken Father Matthew's pledge. Soon 
thereafter, becoming very thirsty, he slipped into 
a saloon and applied for a lemonade, and whilst 
it was being mixed he whispered to the bar- 



tender: 'Av ye could drap a bit o' brandy in it, 
all unbeknown to myself, I'd make no fuss about 
it.' My notion was that if Grant could let Jefil 
Davis escape all unbeknown to himself, he was to 
let him go. I didn't want him." 

When we recall all that did happen when Jef- 
ferson Davis was captured, and what a white ele- 
phant he became in the hands of the Govern- 
ment, it will be seen that there was sagacity as 
well as humor in Lincoln's illustration. 

A goodly volume, embracing passages from the 
various speeches and writings of Abraham Lin- 
coln, might be compiled to show that he was a 
master of English prose. The Gettysburg 
address has innumerable counterparts, as far as 
mere style goes. But there needs to be no fur- 
ther proof that the man who could scribble such 
a composition as that with a lead-pencil on a pad 
in a railway carriage was the equal of any man 
who ever wrote his mother tongue. As a con- 
clusive example — as short as it is sublime — let 
me read it to you. Like a chapter of Holy 
Writ, it can never grow old or stale: 

" Four-score and seven years ago our fathers brought 
forth on this continent a new Nation, conceived in 
liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men 
are created equal. 

" Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing 
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so 
dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great 
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a 
portion of that field as a final resting place for those 
who here gave their lives that that nation might live. 



It is altogether fittiug and proper that we should 
do this. 

" But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can 
not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The 
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have 
consecrated it far beyond our poor power to add or 
detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, 
what we say here ; but it can never forget what they did 
here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here 
to the unfinished work which they who fought here have 
thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be 
here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — 
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion 
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure 
of devotion— that we here highly resolve that these dead 
shall not have died in vain ; that this nation under God 
shall have a new birth of freedom ; and that govern- 
ment of the people, by the people, for the people, shall 
not perish from the earth." 

I have said that Abraham Lincoln was an old- 
line Whig of the school of Henry Clay, with 
strong free-soil opinions, but never an extremist 
or an abolitionist. He was what they used to 
call in those old days ''a Conscience Whig." 
He stood in actual awe of the Constitution and 
his oath of office. Hating slavery, he recognized 
its constitutional existence and rights. He 
wanted gradually to extinguish it, not to despoil 
those who held it as a property interest. He 
was so faithful to these principles that he 
approached emancipation, not only with great 
deliberation, but with many misgivings. He 
issued his final proclamation as a military neces- 
sity; as a war measure; and even then, so just 



was his nature that he was meditating some kind 
of just restitution. 

I gather that he was not a Civil Service Re- 
former of the School of Grover Cleveland, because 
I find among his papers a short, peremptory 
note to Stanton, in which he says : "I personally 
wish Jacob Freese, of New Jersey, appointed 
colonel of a colored regiment, and this regard- 
less of whether he can tell the exact color of 
Julius Caesar's hair." 

His unconventionalism was only equaled by 
his humanity. No custodian of absolute power 
ever exercised it so benignly. His interposition 
in behalf of men sentenced to death by courts- 
martial became so demoralizing that his generals 
in the field united in a round-robin protest. Both 
Grant and Sherman cut the wires between their 
headquarters and Washington to escape his inter- 
ference with the iron rule of military discipline. 

A characteristic story is told by John B. Ally, 
of Boston, who, going to the White House three 
days in succession, found each day in the outer 
halls a gray-haired old man, silently weeping. The 
third day, touched by this not uncommon spec- 
tacle, he went up to the old man and ascertained 
that he had a son under sentence of death and 
was trying to reach the President. 

"Come along," said Ally, "I'll take you to the 
President." 

Mr. Lincoln listened to the old man's pitiful 
story, and sadly replied that he had just received 
a telegram from the general in command, implor- 



ing him not to interfere. The old man cast 
one last heart-broken look at the President, 
and started shuffling toward the door. Before 
he reached it Mr. Lincoln called him back. 
"Come back, old man," he said, "come back! 
the generals may telegraph and telegraph, but 
I am going to pardon that young man." 

Thereupon he sent a dispatch directing sentence 
to be suspended until execution should be ordered 
by himself Then the old man burst out cry- 
ing again, exclaiming : " Mr. President, that is not 
a pardon, you only hold up the sentence of my 
boy until you can order him to be shot!" 

Lincoln turned quickly and, half smiles, half 
tears, said: "Go along, old man, go along in 
peace; if your son lives until I order him to be 
shot, he'll grow to be as old as Methuselah!" 

I could keep you here all night relating such in- 
cidents. They were common occurrences at the 
White House. There was not a day of Lincoln's 
life that he was not doing some act of charity; 
not like a sentimentalist, overcome by his emo- 
tions, but like a brave, sensible man, who knew 
where to draw the line and who made few, if 
any, mistakes. 

I find no better examples of the peculiar 
cast of his mind than are interspersed throughout 
the record of his intercourse with his own rela- 
tions. His domestic correspondence is full of 
canny wisdom and unconscious humor. In par- 
ticular, he had a ne'er-do-well step-brother, by 
the name of Johnston, a son of his father's 



second wife, of whom he was very fond. There 
are many letters to this Johnston. One of these 
I am going to read you, because it will require 
neither apology nor explanation. It is illustra- 
tive of both the canny wisdom and unconscious 
humor. Thus: 

" Springfield, Jau. 2, 1851. — Dear Brother : Your 
request for eighty dollars I do not think it best to compl}' 
with now. At the various times I have helped you a 
little you have said : ' We can get along very well now,' 
but in a short time I find you in the same diflBculty again. 
Now this can only happen through some defect in you. 
What that defect is I think I know. You are not lazy, 
and still you are au idler. I doubt whether since I saw 
you you have done a good, whole day's work in any one 
day. You do not very much dislike to work, and still 
you do not work much, merely because it does not seem 
to you you get enough for it. This habit of uselessly 
wasting time is the whole difficulty. It is vastly im- 
portant to you, and still more to your children, that you 
break the habit. . . . 

" You are now in need of some money, and what I 
propose is that you shall go to work, ' tooth and nail,' 
for somebody who will give you money for it. Let 
father and j'our boys take charge of your things at home, 
prepare for a crop and make the crop, and you go to 
work for the best money wages you can get, or in dis- 
charge of any debt you owe, and, to secure you a fair 
reward for your labor, I promise you that for every 
dollar you will get for your labor between this and the 
ist of May, either in money, or in your indebtedness, I 
will then give you one other dollar. By this, if you hire 
yourself for ten dollars a month, from me you will get 
ten dollars more, making twenty dollars. . . . 

" In this I do not mean that you shall go off to St. 
Louis or the lead mines in Missouri, or the gold mines 
in California, but I mean for you to go at it for the best 



wages you can get close to home in Coles county. If 
you will do this you will soon be out of debt, and, what 
is better, you will have acquired a habit which will keep 
you from getting in debt again. But if I should now 
clear you out of debt, next year you would be just as 
deep in debt as ever. 

"You say you would almost give your place in 
Heaven for seventy or eighty dollars ? Then you value 
your place in Heaven very cheap, for I am sure you can, 
with the offer I make, get the seventy or eighty dollars 
for four or five months' work. 

" You say if I will lend you the money, you will deed 
me the land, and, if you don't pay the money back, you 
will deliver possession. Nonsense! If you can not now 
live with the land, how will you then live without it? 

" You have always been kind to me, and I do not 
mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will 
but follow my advice, you will find it worth eighty times 
eighty dollars to you. 

" Affectionately your brother, 

A. Lincoln." 

Could anything be wiser, sweeter, or delivered 
in terms more specific yet more fraternal ? And 
that was Abraham Lincoln from the crown of his 
head to the soles of his feet. 

I am going to spare you and myself, and the 
dear ones of his own blood who are here to-night, 
the story of the awful tragedy that closed the life 
of this great man, this good man, this typical 
American. 

Beside that tragedy, most other tragedies, epic 
and real, become insignificant. "Within the nar- 
row compass of that stage-box that night were 
five human beings ; the most illustrious of modern 
heroes, crowned with the most stupendous vie- 



tory of modern times; his beloved wife, proud 
and happy; two betrothed lovers with all the 
promise of felicity that youth, social position and 
wealth could give them ; and a young actor, 
handsome as Endymion upon Latmus, the idol of 
his little world. The glitter of fame, happiness 
and ease was upon the entire group; but in an 
instant everything was to be changed with the 
blinding swiftness of enchantment. Quick death 
was to come on the central figure of that com- 
pany. . . . Over all the rest the blackest fates 
hovered menacingly; fates from which a mother 
might pray that kindly death would save her chil- 
dren in their infancy. One was to wander with 
the stain of murder on his soul, with the curses 
of a world upon his name, with a price set upon 
his head, in frightful physical pain, till he died a 
dog's death in a burning barn. The stricken 
wife was to pass the rest of her days in melan- 
choly and madness ; of those two young lovers, 
one was to slay the other, and then end his life a 
raving maniac!"* No book of tragedy contains a 
single chapter quite so dark as that. 

What was the mysterious power of this mys- 
terious man, and whence? 

His was the genius of common sense ; of com- 
mon sense in action; of common sense in 
thought; of common sense enriched by experi- 
ence and unhindered by fear. "He was a common 
man," says his friend Joshua Speed, "expanded 
into giant proportions ; well acquainted with the 

* Hay and Nicolay's Life. 



people, he placed his hand on the beating pulse 
of the nation, judged of its disease, and was 
ready with a remedy." Inspired he was truly, 
as Shakespeare was inspired ; as Mozart was 
inspired; as Burns was inspired; each, like him, 
sprung directly from the people. 

I look into the crystal globe that, slowly turn- 
ing, tells the story of his life, and I see a little 
heart-broken boy, weeping by the outstretched 
form of a dead mother, then bravely, nobly trudg- 
ing a hundred miles to obtain her Christian 
burial. I see this motherless lad growing to 
manhood amid scenes that seem to lead to noth- 
ing but abasement; no teachers; no books; no 
chart, except his own untutored mind ; no com- 
pass, except his own undisciplined will ; no light, 
save light from Heaven ; yet, like the caravel of 
Columbus, struggling on and on through the 
trough of the sea, always toward the destined 
land. I see the full-grown man, stalwart and 
brave, an athlete in activity of movement and 
strength of limb, yet vexed by weird dreams and 
visions; of life, of love, of religion, sometimes 
verging on despair. I see the mind, grown as 
robust as the body, throw off these phantoms of 
the imagination and give itself wholly to the 
work-a-day uses of the world ; the rearing of 
children; the earning of bread; the multiplied 
duties of life. I see the party leader, self-confi- 
dent in conscious rectitude; original, because it 
was not his nature to follow ; potent, because he 
was fearless, pursuing his convictions with earnest 



zeal, and urging them upon his fellows with the 
resources of an oratory which was hardly more 
impressive than it was many-sided. I see him, 
the preferred among his fellows, ascend the 
eminence reserved for him, and him alone of all 
the statesmen of the time, amid the derision of 
opponents and the distrust of supporters, yet 
unawed and unmoved, because thoroughly 
equipped to meet the emergency. The same 
being, from first to last; the poor child weeping 
over a dead mother; the great chief sobbing amid 
the cruel horrors of war; flinching not from duty, 
nor changinghis life-long ways of dealing with the 
stern realities which pressed upon him and hurried 
him onward. And, last scene of all, that ends this 
strange, eventful history, I see him lying dead 
there in the capitol of the nation, to which he had 
rendered " the last, full measure of his devotion," 
the flag of his country around him, the world 
in mourning, and, asking myself how could any 
man have hated that man, I ask you, how can any 
man refuse his homage to his memory ? Surely, 
he was one of God's elect; not in any sense a 
creature of circumstance, or accident. Recurring 
to the doctrine of inspiration, I say again and 
again, he was inspired of God, and I can not see 
how any one who believes in that doctrine can 
regard him as anything else. 

'^^FfOmCsesar to Bismarck and Gladstone the 
world has had its statesmen and its soldiers — men 
who rose to eminence and power step by step, 
through a series of geometric progression as it 



were, each advancement following in regular 
order one after the other, the whole obedient to 
well-established and well-understood laws of 
cause and effect. They were not what we call 
" men of destiny." They were " men of the time." 
They were men whose careers had a beginning, 
a middle and an end, rounding off lives with his- 
tories, full it may be of interesting and exciting 
event, but comprehensive and comprehensible; 
simple, clear, complete. 

The inspired ones are fewer. Whence their 
emanation, where and how they got their power, 
by what rule they lived, moved and had their 
being, we know not. There is no explication to 
their lives. They rose from shadow and they 
went in mist. We see them, feel them, but we 
know them not. They came, God's word upon 
their lips ; they did their office, God's mantle 
about them; and they vanished, GocJ^- -h©^l-y4ighi 
be4:-w.€eii-~th-c--world-af¥d-rite«i, leaving behind a 
memory, half mortal and half myth. From first 
to last they were the creations of some special 
Providence, baffling the wit of man to fathom, 
defeating the machinations of the world, the flesh 
and the devil, until their work was done, then 
passing from the scene as mysteriously as they 
had come upon it. 

Tried by this standard, where shall we find an 
example so impressive as Abraham Lincoln, whost 
career might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at ; 
once the prelude and the epilogue of the most 
imperial theme of modern times ? ^^^ 



Born as lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel ; 
reared in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light 
or fair surrounding; without graces, actual or ac- 
quired; without name or fame or official training; 
it was reserved for this strange being, late in life, 
to be snatched from obscurity, raised to supreme 
command at a supreme moment, and intrusted 
with the destiny of a nation. 

The great leaders of his party, the most expe- 
rienced and accomplished public men of the day, 
were made to stand aside ; were sent to the rear, 
whilst this fantastic figure was led by unseen 
hands to the front and given the reins of power. 
It is immaterial whether we were for him, or 
against him ; wholly immaterial. That, during 
four years, carrying with them such a weight of 
responsibility as the world never witnessed be- 
fore, he filled the vast space allotted him in the 
eyes and actions of mankind, is to say that he 
was inspired of God, for nowhere else could he 
have acquired the wisdom and the virtue. 

Where did Shakespeare get his genius ? Where 
did Mozart get his music? Whose hand smote 
the lyre of the Scottish plowman, and stayed the 
life of the German priest ? God, God, and God 
alone; and as surely as these were raised up by 
God, inspired by God, was Abraham Lincoln ; 
and a thousand years hence, no drama, no tragedy, 
no epic poem will be filled with greater wonder, 
or be followed by mankind with deeper feeling 
than that which tells the story of his life and 
death. 






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